“With today’s announcement, AT&T GigaPower is far outpacing every other competitor, even Google Fiber,” said Jeffrey Kagan, an independent analyst. The carrier noted it is now providing the service to 1 million locations within the 58 cities and expects to double that number by the end of 2016.

Netflix now gobbles up a bigger chunk of traffic than all streaming audio and video did five years ago

Streaming media sites now devour more than 70 percent of internet traffic in North America, with No. 1 Netflix accounting for 37.1 percent of all data sent to people logging into non-mobile connections.

YouTube and Amazon Video rounded out the top three sources of traffic. All three increased their share in the twice-a-year “Global Internet Phenomena Report” from network equipment maker Sandvine, with Amazon and Hulu making particular increases that moved them up the ranks.

The data provides a glimpse at how much people are watching entertainment on sites like Netflix, which in the last two years has aggressively produced original shows it characterizes as hits but has kept mum on viewership stats. The traffic increase underscores the growing popularity of these services, but the findings also reflect how their streaming content is growing more data-heavy. Formats like 4K high-definition video, which is slowly becoming more common, eat up much more traffic than the exact same show in a lower quality.

“The leading service in 2015, Netflix, now has a greater share of traffic than all of streaming audio and video did five years ago,” Sandvine CEO Dave Caputo said in a release.

What Are the Latest Internet Trends in Africa, Middle East, and North America?

Real-Time Entertainment (streaming video and audio) traffic now accounts for over 70% of North American downstream traffic in the peak evening hours on fixed access networks. Five years ago it accounted for less than 35%
With the growth of video, BitTorrent share continues to see a decline in fixed access bandwidth share, and now accounts for only 5% of total traffic in North America. Last year during the same period it accounted for over 7%
On mobile networks in the Middle East, Instagram is responsible for over 10% of total traffic. Combining Instagram with traffic from WhatsApp and Facebook, reveals that Facebook controls almost 25% of mobile traffic in the region
WhatsApp, driven by the recent addition of voice calling, now accounts for more than 10% of downstream mobile traffic in Africa
The release of Windows 10 in July did not break the Internet as some predicted. Microsoft’s decision to deploy the update in waves, during off-peak hours resulted in the release having minimal impact on networks around the globe

Davey Alba / Wired:
In select regions, the US Postal Service will soon email you scans of envelopes you receive in the mail — The US Postal Service Will Soon Email You Scans of Your Mail — The US Postal Service is rolling out a new service that emails you scans of the mail you’ll be getting in your mailbox each day.

The US Postal Service is rolling out a new service that emails you scans of the mail you’ll be getting in your mailbox each day.

The USPS has been testing the service, Informed Delivery, in some zip codes in Northern Virginia since 2014, and it will reach the New York City metro area, plus select areas of Connecticut, beginning this fall. USPS says expansion to other areas is being considered for 2016. For now, the Postal Service will only send you scans of letter-sized envelopes.

USPS actually already photographs every letter and package mailed in the United States—a practice it started after anthrax attacks in late 2001

So this new notifications system may not necessarily add a whole bunch of extra work to the agency’s current processes.

The question is how much usefulness this adds to simply checking your mailbox when you get home. The Postal Service’s own track record when it comes to attempts to be technologically forward is a bit of a mixed bag

Launched last year as Project Squared, Spark is similar to Slack, the ubiquitous office messaging app.

Cisco would very much like to compete with products like Slack, which has about a million users, and features widely requested in Slack are voice and video calling. Cisco has the hardware and the history of supplying infrastructure to link a Slack-like service with the phones and other equipment many companies already have.

Cisco’s plan, which takes effect today, calls for adding voice telephony and video conferencing into a single unified experience. What starts as a phone call can, at a click, be converted into a video meeting. Video calls that begin on a meeting room system can, at the swipe of a screen, move to a mobile device.

Spark will also be enabled for existing Cisco-made desktop telephones and video conferencing systems by way of a Cisco cloud service

Collaboration was a $4 billion business in Cisco’s most recently completed fiscal year, making it the company’s third-largest segment by revenue after switching and routing equipment. About a billion dollars of that is WebEx, the Web-based meeting and presentation service.

Chances are, somewhere in your home, there‘s a tangled mess of wires and blinking lights that make your Wi-Fi work. Your router likely isn’t the most sightly thing, and you probably hide it behind a curtain or under a bookcase—out of sight. Turns out, that’s a bit of a problem, since routers work better when they’re out in the open. So a few months ago, we released the first OnHub router from TP-LINK. It replaces the unruly cords, blinking lights, and bulky antennas of a typical router with subtle lighting and internal wiring, so you’re more likely to put OnHub out where it works best. Today we’re introducing more ways to make your OnHub look great in your home with three new, interchangeable shells for the OnHub from TP-LINK, as well as OnHub Makers, a gallery of shells designed by artists, designers, and makers.

With OnHub Makers, we wanted to see what some of the world’s most creative minds would do to personalize their routers. We reached out to artists, makers and designers who poured resin, blew glass, and cut paper to make their own unique shells.

Feeling inspired? Then it’s time to get crafty. We’ve put together all of the information you need to customize an OnHub shell. Whether you’re using a laser cutter or simple finger paints, download the Maker Packet for 3D files, 2D patterns, and useful guidelines.

If DIY isn’t really your thing you can still add some style to your Wi-Fi with one of the three new shells from the OnHub team

Off-grid living isn’t for everyone, but it has gotten easier in recent years. Cheap solar panels and wind turbines let you generate your own power, and there are plenty of strategies to deal with fuel, water and sanitation. But the one thing many folks find hard to do without – high-speed internet access – has few options for the really remote homestead. [tlankford01] wants to fix that and is working on an open-source mesh network to provide high-speed internet access to off-grid communities.

Update 11/29/15 Necessity is the mother of invention, so of course we have have a need. Sprint purchased Clearwire communications and then chose to shut them down. We have had Clear since 2007 when it was first available in our area. It has been ideal as we are off grid and the wimax service was adequate for our needs. To fix this we have established a 3.5 mile connection with a tier one service and have it brought down to the house.

Update 8/18/14: I have been researching and thinking a lot about this subject lately. I believe that we can combine solar, wind, microcomputers, and long range routers to achieve what we are looking for. I will elaborate in a project log.

The idea is to create a base system that is repeatable, relatively inexpensive, reliable, and challenges the status quo. The basis of this idea comes from a situation that I have witnessed personally that is the direction of the internet today. In America, we are disillusioned that we have the best of everything in the world. The fact is that we have a fairly miserable internet speed for the developed world.

Their chief argument seems to be that we need to pay more so that can innovate and give more access. They even have organizations like the NAACP and LULAC schilling against net neutrality. The truth is that I have witnessed in the last month a cable company pull out of my home town. My parents have been left with wireless access choices that are extremely limited or prohibitively expensive.

My parents switched to Verizon and the $70 unlimited plan turned into $70 10GB plan and then turned into a $500 per month bill for two months use.

I along with most of us believe that information should be freely accessible and available. An educated society is a civil one. That is why I am working on this project. The goal is to provide and alternative to the current system and provide access to the internet in places that it is not either available or affordable. I also believe that communities could actually fund projects like free wifi for the entire community.

This is the temporary setup to make sure it all works. I am working on a small building to secure the bridge a little better. I have taken a Ubiquiti AirMax 5 Ghz and am capturing from a similar unit at 3.3 miles away. This brings the tier one connection to the hill. It has to be line of sight so I had to make the solar station on the hill to reach the tower due to topography.

I have two Ubiquiti loco stations from the hill to the antenna mast on the lab. It is all light POE 24VDC powered. So I have a 12V deep cycle automotive/ equipment with a buck boost module to boost to 24V and I have just powered both Ubiquiti units with a direct POE injection.

Long Range Mesh with Drones
01/24/2015 at 17:35 • 0 comments

I have added a project, LOKI, that is a drone for testing the community mesh network. It has long range Ubiquiti wifi on it so that we can test signal strength, speeds, and range. Thank you for keeping up with this. I know that it seems like I have several projects but in the end they all are part of a larger system.

Wild Onion is a mesh networked TOR based free radio (WiFi, 151MHz, 433MHz, etc) peer tp peer alternative internet . The key to Wild Onion is flexibilty in transmission infrastructure. Data will be transmitted by the movement of people not by expensive radio,fiber optic and satillite networks, making it possible for third world communities (or anyone) with cheap mobile phones to have their own free computer communications network.

Nokia and ARM are at the heart of a bid to revamp the ageing TCP/IP stack to make it better suited to networks that need to operate at very high speed and/or low latency. Among the plethora of industry alliances at the intersection of telecoms, IT and IP, this looks like one with a genuine contribution to make to the evolution of future standards, including 5G.

The network connection itself is only a part of the total telecoms platform these days, and in the evolution of 5G, it will be critical that the 3GPP’s core standards are closely aligned to work being done in the IP, cloud and data areas too. LTE may be IP-based, but it was a complicated process to get IP and mobile technologies fully married and as networks get faster and more virtualized, there is a real risk that the venerable TCP/IP stack is failing to keep up.

In 5G, there may be the opportunity to develop the next generations of these two key network standards in parallel – and indeed, that will be crucial to success and deployability, given that one important reason for developing 5G at all is to enable the next waves of the Internet, the Internet of Things and the future Tactile Internet.

Revamping the TCP/IP stack

Many believe that a critical success factor for 5G will be a fully revamped TCP/IP stack, optimized for the massively varied use cases of the next mobile generation, for cloud services, and for virtualization and software-defined networking (SDN). This is the goal of the new OpenFastPath (OFP) Foundation, founded by Nokia Networks, ARM and industrial IT services player Enea. This aims to create an open source TCP/IP stack which can accelerate the move towards SDN in carrier and enterprise networks. Other sign-ups include AMD, Cavium, Freescale, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the ARM-associated open source initiative, Linaro.

Nokia and its allies hope to accelerate the platforms to create open but secure network applications, which harness IP packet processing and support a whole range of use cases, some requiring very high throughput, others ultra-low latency (or both).

It would consist of a high performance user space TCP/IP stack. User space networking aims to get TCP/IP out of the kernel – kernels are code-intensive, and using them for packet processing involves a number of operations (moving packets into memory, then to the kernel, then back out to the interface) which could be streamlined to reduce latency. The BBC has built a user space stack to allow its video servers to push put HD video, for instance, and user space networking is also seen as an important way to accelerate mobile network processing.

An open, cloud-focused architecture

The new fast-path TCP/IP stack will be based on the open source FreeBSD operating system and will initially comprise the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), and Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP). Other functions will be added in the future.

As SDN moves into the mainstream of operator and enterprise plans, IT solutions will increasingly rely on transport layer capabilities, and so both layers must evolve in tandem.

For ARM, the stakes are very high here, given that SDN and data centre/telecoms convergence are golden opportunities for its rival Intel.

The resulting stack will run on most major processor architectures – ARM, x86, PowerPC and MIPS, but ARM knows the value of being at the heart of the standards action. It needs to expand its reach beyond mobile devices and build ecosystems of similar weight in higher growth markets like cloud infrastructure and the IoT.

For Nokia’s part, success with a broad industry platform would reinforce the progress it has already made in moving towards the cloud and IT markets, along with its mobile operator customers. Of the tier one infrastructure suppliers, Nokia has been the most ready to adapt to the SDN, IT convergence and virtualization trends, even though those threaten its still-hefty revenues from proprietary network hardware. When it completes its acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent, it will also add broad cloud platforms and a wider SDN portfolio to its arsenal.

So while, a few years ago, it would have been bizarre to see Nokia leading an open, cloud-oriented alliance like the OFP Foundation, now that comes as little surprise. The Finnish firm is succeeding in capturing some of that sphere of influence for the telecoms industry, rather than letting IBM and the IT giants make all the running, leaving the networks experts as supporting partners only.

Foundation, not only are IBM and Intel absent, but HP Enterprise appears to be taking a junior role. Nokia’s Liquid Net was an early example of a network which was, by the standards of the time, very software-controlled, so that resources and capacity could be allocated flexibly where required, from RAN to core to transport.

That was followed by Liquid Apps, a genuine breakthrough in IT/telecoms convergence, which deployed certain applications and content on x86 servers close to the cell site

For now, however, Nokia’s launch of AirFrame in June showed that it will cling to hardware for as long as possible, even if that must be a new type of hardware. The ultimate vision may be that off-the-shelf x86 (or ARM-based) servers evolve to the stringent performance levels required by some network functions, but in reality, for many years, some of those functions will require specialized accelerators.

Intel has been addressing that telecoms/IT convergence with a series of coprocessors, targeted at specific network activities including baseband processing, to act as companions for its Xeon server chips.

A group of major vendors has put forward an open source TCP/IP stack they say is designed to reinvigorate the ancient and rather crusty protocol.

Nokia, ARM, and Enea are offering up both code and tutorials here for their OpenFastPath user-space TCP/IP implementation.

As The Register has previously noted, user-space networking is designed to get TCP/IP out of the kernel space, for two reasons: kernels have absorbed a lot of code over the years; and using the kernel for packet processing involves extra operations to get packets into memory, pass them to the kernel, and push them back out to the interface.

The BBC, for example, has crafted a user-space stack so its video farms can push out the 340,000 packets per second needed for high-definition video, and a Swiss company called Teclo is using a user-space stack to improve mobile network processing.

Enter OpenFastPath: based on FreeBSD, it currently includes User Datagram Protocol (UDP), Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), and Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) functions, with more to be added in the future.

With decades of experience connecting the world and a membership that includes all major technology and service providers, 3GPP should be the default provider of IoT connectivity. But the 3GPP membership is failing the industry by forgetting the fundamentals that made it a success in the first place — providing one universal technology.

3GPP’s spirit of “coop-etition” set the bar for standardized technology. The system benefited from industry-wide cooperation during the evaluation and adoption process, followed by heavy competition during commercialization. They built a global, innovative ecosystem in which everyone can make money.

But in the case of IoT, 3GPP has lost its way. At the moment, there are three major paths being supported by 3GPP for IoT: the machine-type version of LTE (known as LTE-M) and two technologies coming from the Cellular-IoT initiative — NB-IoT and EC-GSM.

LTE-M has been a sustained effort through 2015 and although it has hit a few hiccups along the way there will like be a base standard in 2016. The Cellular-IoT stream was bogged down with no less than five different competing technologies in the first part of 2015.

Huawei seemed to be championing the clear winner with its Narrow Band C-IoT technology, closely followed Qualcomm’s NB-OFDM. At the end of the summer, an Ericsson-led coalition surfaced with an NB-LTE proposal, making the muddied waters even more unclear. But after a series of mergers and compromises, the Cellular-IoT effort seemed coalesce to a new technology named NB-IoT that is barely on its legs and within itself has too many options to offer to be an efficient IoT solution.

The 2G based EC-GSM, (extended coverage GSM) still has some backers that are actively moving forward with standardization as part of GERAN. So here we are with three full standardization efforts in 3GPP for IoT connectivity.

The promise of billions of connected devices leads everyone to assume that there will be plenty of room for multiple technologies. This may be true to some extent, but this betrays the premise of IoT, that a connected world will offer gains through efficiency.

The dollars spent on IoT are not new dollars, but dollars expected through returns on efficiency. These efficiencies must be ingrained in all parts of the ecosystem and will only reach its potential through scalability and standardization.

Businesses will not deploy billions of devices on a patched solution of 3GPP and ISM-based systems. Customers will not embrace IoT if they have to choose between LTE-M and Sigfox-enabled products that may or may not work in all cases.

Spectrum is the next problem for 3GPP and carriers. Licensed mobile spectrum is now scattered from 600Mhz to almost 4GHz. LTE has over 40 bands that need to be supported, causing smartphone manufacturers massive headaches (and costs) in producing and managing region-specific devices.

One of the big reasons GSM was a big winner in the 2G technology wars was because it was globally available in only four bands.

IoT technologies require as little as 200kHz for bandwidth. But if there is no coordinated plan on where that bandwidth is deployed, OEM manufacturers will again bear the cost, managing devices at a regional or possibly national level. Again, we lose efficiency and scale. The cost of wireless connectivity will remain a barrier to entry to IoT.

The NBASE-T Alliance, an industry-wide cooperative effort to promote the development of 2.5 and 5 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) bandwidth over twisted-pair copper cabling (2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T), celebrated its one-year anniversary with the release of a new MAC-PHY specification, and the addition of 14 new members, bringing total membership in the group to more than 45 companies.

As part of its work to accelerate product development, the Alliance is announcing availability of the first version of the USXGMII MAC-PHY specification. This key specification facilitates system development by enabling simple multivendor interconnection of MAC and PHY components. The first version of the specification defines a single-port interface. Dual and multi-port versions are expected in Q1 2016.

“The transition to next generation 802.11ac Wave 2 access points will drive significant demand for 2.5G ports in the coming years as this technology will allow enterprises to cost-effectively deliver more bandwidth, while re-using parts of their existing infrastructure,”

“We expect 2016 will be a year of widespread product adoption and intend to deliver the supporting specifications and certification programs needed to develop a strong ecosystem around 2.5G and 5GBASE-T.”

Members of VECTOR [Versatile Easy installable Connector implementing new Technologies for accelerated fiber Optic network Roll-outs in Europe], a research and innovation initiative funded by the European Commission to develop a low-cost, field-installable fiber-optic connector technology, say they have achieved their objective. VECTOR says its new approach to these types of connectors leverages a variety of technologies, including heat-shrinkable materials, nano-materials, high-tech gels, micro-fabrication, and micro-mechanical alignment systems.

The proposed new technology involves a ferrule-less connector and a fully automated installation tool that enables field installation by a general-skill technician. The ferrule-less connector achieves a performance that exceeds the “Grade B” insertion loss specifications of the International Electrotechnical Commission’s IEC 61300-3-34 international standard for random mated connectors. The connectors do not require cleaning between mating/unmating cycles, say the VECTOR members. Instead, a self-cleaning feature keeps the fiber tip dust free and ensures low connection loss and high repeatability, the group explained.

Telecom Italia and Telekom Deutschland tested the newly developed connector in their labs.

5G network technology research is ready to move into a new phase. The German measuring house Rohde & Schwarz say they developed the market’s first commercial tool that can be used to model and analyze the activity of 5G channels in different environments.

TS 5GCS software is used in conjunction with Rohden signal and a spectrum analyzer and a signal generator with. The software enables the analysis of signal paths (channel sounding).

Rohde & Schwarz points out that a 5G signals are difficult to test for two reasons. Firstly they move the new frequencies, including millimeter range. Second, the signal bandwidth increases. Because of this behavior signals – interference, reflections – should be analyzed more closely, in order to optimize the traffic channel.

Norwegian NetCom belonging to TeliaSonera has made a new speed record for 4G networks data transfer. Oslo demos were already achieves one Gigabit per second speed data link.

NetCom demo connected to the same link four different carrier of 800 MHz as well as 1.8, 2.1 and 2.6 GHz frequency bands (13 Release according to specifications).

The demo is based on a new technology for which the 3GPP has provided the name of the LTE-Advanced Pro. Earlier this Release 13 assays reflected the technology has been discussed in general the term 4.5g. In the future, the abbreviation spread further in the LTE-AP.

wiss Lausanne Polytechnic removed from school bus Kandou AS is now presented serdes circuit, which is capable of transferring data at terabytes per second between the two circuits.

Glasswing brand name received serdes-circuit consumes less than one watt of power somewhat. Relationship between performance and power consumption is very good.

Kandoun bit shift circuits based on the Chord signaling. It correlated signals are transmitted over a plurality of connecting wires: five bits transferred over the six wires to reach 125 Gigabit per second rate. Full speed reached 12 millimeters in length and half the rate achieved even 24 millimeter.
Kandou sell this high speed serdes interface as IP core.

Cisco has forgotten to install all the light emitting diodes (LEDs) in some routers.

The Register understands that the LTE-enabled C800 integrated service routers. models C896, C897, and C898, lack LEDs that indicate traffic is passing over the WAN. Cisco has ‘fessed up to the mess in a field notice that says “… two LEDs and two resistors were not added to the bill of materials and therefore those LEDs and resistors are not populated on production units.”

“As a result, GE8 and SFP8 WAN ports do not provide visual indication of the link status or data activity. The user is unable to look at the router in order to determine whether the port is active or not active.”

The field notice suggests either using the command line interface or asking Cisco for a replacement.

A Project Fi support page for tablets and “other compatible devices” has just gone live, and it spills all the juicy details of the very-soon-to-launch (we assume) feature on Google’s MVNO. The best part? The money: it costs nothing to add a tablet to your Project Fi plan. There is no monthly device fee, and it doesn’t even appear that Google is charging for SIMs, though we’ve yet to verify that. You just pay for the data you use, and that’s it.

You can add up to nine data-only devices – be it a tablet, smartphone, or something else

Instructions on the page state that ordering a SIM requires going to the Project Fi website, entering the account tab, then going to “Your Plan,” and selecting “Add data-only SIM.”

The FCC has extended a rule that will exempt small broadband carriers from portions of its 2015 Open Internet rules.

US internet service providers who have less than 100,000 total connections will not be required to provide the detailed transparency reports mandated by the FCC rules. The reports include detailed information for the public on promotional discounts, surcharges and fees, and data caps placed on users.

According to the FCC, the exemption clause is designed to lessen the burden smaller regional carriers would face were they tasked with providing regular transparency reports to the public and the FCC.

The Commission notes in its decision that though it believes customers of smaller carriers should have equal rights to view carrier policies, it has yet to determine how the transparency requirements can be applied to small companies without racking up more costs.

The exemption will run until December 15, 2016, when the FCC will have to decide whether to further extend the exemption, abolish it, or make it permanent.

Banner Engineering’s DF-G3 discrete long-range fiber amplifier has dual digital displays for use with plastic and glass fiber optic assemblies and is available with a single discrete output or two dual discrete outputs.

Banner Engineering’s DF-G3 discrete long-range fiber amplifier has dual digital displays for use with plastic and glass fiber optic assemblies. The DF-G3 can sense more than 3 m (10 ft) with opposed mode fibers or more than 1 m (3 ft) with diffuse mode fibers and can detect dark targets at long range. It also features enhanced detection sensitivity when using specialty fiber assemblies for large area and small part detection applications.

Optical communication is the only way to respond to the enormous amounts of data growth. Vienna’s Technical University have now developed a optocomponent capable of preventing light to move in another direction.

In principle, such components have been for a long time. The so-called. Optical isolators, or insulators, however, usually based on the Faraday effect, ie the magnetic field prevents the photons movement in any direction. These components can not, however, be required by future nano-size.

Researchers have manufactured component that flows only in one direction like a moving diode: the light moves only in one direction.

This was achieved by connecting the metal atom in very fine glass fiber. Depending on running on the light forward or backward, the polarization direction of movement changes. If the metal atom is in the right mode and connected to the glass fiber, it is possible to respond in various ways to the direction of rotation of light.

Internet provider Cox Communications is responsible for the copyright infringements of its subscribers, a Virginia federal jury has ruled. The ISP is guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement and must pay music publisher BMG $25 million in damages.

Today marks the end of a crucial case that will define how U.S. Internet providers deal with online piracy in the future.

Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Akamai: Global average Internet speed grew 14% to 5.1 Mbps, only 5.2% of users have broadband — Global average connection speeds rose 14 percent year over year to 5.1 Mbps in Q3 2015. Unfortunately, just over 5 percent of users now have broadband speeds of at least 25.0 Mbps.

Global average connection speeds rose 14 percent year over year to 5.1 Mbps in Q3 2015. Unfortunately, just over 5 percent of users now have broadband speeds of at least 25.0 Mbps. The latest figures come from Akamai, which today published its quarterly State of the Internet Report for Q3 2015.

That’s what Donald Trump, the front-runner to be the Republican nominee for president of the United States, suggested last night at the final debate of the year.

Trump tempered the remark by saying the US should shut down the Web in ISIS-controlled Syria and Iraq, but his idea could still be a logistical nightmare.

Regardless of the technical hurdles, experts say it’s also just a terrible idea.

“Preventing entire populations from getting access to basic information would be a human-rights catastrophe, particularly for areas of the world that are already war-torn,” said Thomas Ristenpart, a computer science professor at Cornell Tech. The ability to find information with Internet connected smartphones is vital to refugees fleeing ISIS in Syria, for example.

ICANN’s exiting CEO has stunned internet governance experts by fronting a new Chinese government initiative to expand its view of how the internet should be run.

On the last day of the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, the conference organizers unexpectedly announced they had set up a new “high-level advisory committee” that would guide the agenda of future conferences and “contribute ideas for the development of the Internet.”

The committee has already had its first meeting, the organizers stated, naming ICANN’s Fadi Chehade and Alibaba CEO Jack Ma as its founders and noting that it had “invited 31 leading Internet figures from governments, enterprises, academic institutions, and technological communities to be members of the first high-level advisory committee.”

Those “figures” have not been named but we understand they include government representatives from a number of authoritarian governments, including Russia, and do not include lead names from the internet community.

Since 2012 Chehade has been CEO of ICANN, a Californian non-profit that oversees the internet’s domain name system and next year will take over control of the critical IANA functions from the US government. In May, he announced his intention to leave the organization in March 2016 but has yet to find a full-time job.

Although deeply flawed, ICANN represents the international community’s best efforts to design the internet’s future evolution through a “multi-stakeholder” model that allows everyone an equal seat at the table.

In general, ICANN takes a very dim view of efforts to limit or censor the internet, so Chehade’s decision to align himself with the Chinese government, which runs the world’s the most sophisticated censorship program, has come as a surprise and disappointment to many.

Delegates at World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC-15) had a surprisingly high level of agreement around the fate of the 700MHz and sub-700 MHz bands.

When you gather thousands of engineers and regulators in one place for three weeks to review and revise a complex conundrum, such as how to allocate sparse spectrum globally for different wireless communications networks and applications, compromise is paramount.

As predicted in a previous post there was lively interest in and a surprisingly high level of agreement in deliberations around the fate of the 700MHz and sub-700 MHz bands.

“The outcome was as satisfactory as we could have expected as regards more spectrum for mobile broadband, while keeping broadcasters satisfied. There was a lot of pressure on them not to yield,” Mike Goddard, International Spectrum Policy Adviser for consultancy Real Wireless told EE Times.

In addition to confirming the use of the 700 MHz band (technically 694 to 790 MHz) for mobile broadband services in ITU Region 1, which includes Europe, Africa, the Middle east and Central Asia, delegates also agreed to harmonize 200 MHz of the C-band (3.4 to 3.6 GHz) to improve capacity in urban areas and used in small cells, and the L-band (1427-1518 MHz) to improve overall coverage and better capacity.

However, despite intense lobbying from mobile broadband groups, delegates from some 150 countries decided against opening up more sub-700 MHz spectrum to the sector, ensuring that UHF spectrum (470 MHz to 690 MHz) will remain exclusively allocated to terrestrial TV services in Region1, for at least a decade. Delegates decided to review the use of these bands not at the next WRC, but the one planned for 2023.

So the mobile broadband sector now has, at least in the short to medium term, three globally harmonized bands which, according to a statement from John Giusti, chief regulatory officer of the GSMA, represents “a major step forward in meeting the growing demand from citizens worldwide for mobile broadband.” Such harmonization is clearly a huge step to achieve low cost networks and devices for mobile broadband, as well as improved roaming so as to reach poorly served areas. Of course North American carriers have already started rolling out LTE services deploying 700 MHz.”

And there is little doubt 700MHz harmonization will be a key feature in operators’ plans to begin rolling out 5G services.

“The C-band is also likely to be used for 5G. The ITU has not specified in any way the technologies that will be used, but the topics will certainly feature in a big way at the next WRC in 2019. Several issues have already been agreed in the agenda for that Conference”, said Goddard.

Some of these relate to the high frequency bands that will need to be deployed for 5G services, mainly above 24 GHz. “One of the biggest issues facing those developing 5G is to identify large chunks of spectrum. One important band could be between 31.8 to 33.4 GHz, in particular for short range applications,” Goddard told EE Times.

The satellite sector has for long been wary that 5G proponents are eyeing several chunks of spectrum currently used for satellite applications.

As already noted, some spectrum in the L and C bands widely used by satellite service providers was included in the harmonization plans for mobile IMT use, but the SSI group stressed specific measures were agreed to protect adjacent satellite users in 1518-1559 MHz, and there was no reallocation of the upper portion of the C-band, in 3.6 to 4.2 GHz.

Meanwhile, several agenda items were adopted for future conferences that should spur growth in the satellite sector.

Also aside from mobile broadband issues, Goddard noted that delegates in Geneva also approved a potentially very important development by releasing spectrum to be used for wireless avionics intra-communications (WAIC) that will allow for the heavy and bulky wiring in aircraft to be replaced by secure wireless systems.

The MulteFire Alliance has announced its formation, with founding members Nokia and Qualcomm Incorporated and members Ericsson and Intel, and issued a call for global industry participation through voluntary membership.

The Alliance is an independent organization dedicated to developing and promoting MulteFire – an LTE-based technology for small cells operating solely in unlicensed spectrum, such as the global 5 GHz unlicensed band. Utilizing the robust radio link, ease of management and self-organizing characteristics of LTE and its 3GPP standard evolution, MulteFire is envisioned as a means to deliver enhanced performance in local area network deployments.

“By bringing the benefits of LTE technologies to unlicensed spectrum, MulteFire helps provide enhanced coverage, capacity and mobility. It can also improve the Quality of Experience and security in private network deployments,”

“With MulteFire, consumers and network providers will enjoy the combination of 4G-LTE like performance with Wi-Fi-like deployment simplicity in local-area deployments,”

For more information about MulteFire technology, its benefits and how to become a member of the MulteFire Alliance, visit http://www.MulteFire.org.

As recently recorded by telecom analyst Bruce Kushnick, executive director of New Networks Institute, on his blog at Huffington Post, “AT&T has just announced yet another round of new plans to deploy fiber-optic services in a slew of additional cities — what I now refer to as “FiberHype,” one word.”

AT&T has just announced yet another round of new plans to deploy fiber optic services in a slew of additional cities, what I now refer to as “FiberHype,” one word. And I’ll get to the slice of pizza (no toppings) in a moment.

A year ago I wrote an article laying out AT&T’s Top 13 Broken Promises, and you can find all of the gory details in “The Book of Broken Promises”. The theme has been the same for over a decade — just make stuff up; no one will notice or check or hold the company accountable.

1) As stated, AT&T claims it spent $140 billion on fiber optic construction in six years.
2) However, as told by the AT&T’s own 2014 Annual Report, ‘construction and capital expenditures’ (capX) for the last five years were only $103 billion – about $20.6 billion annually.
We did a total for 2015 using 3rdQ, 2015; it comes to only $18 billion in capX.

FINDING 1: AT&T’s own SEC filed financial reports show that capX for the last six years was a total of $121 billion, at best.

11) When We Add All of this Up, Something Is Amiss.

$140 Billion in Six Years — Claimed.
$121 Billion — In Six Years Total Construction, Annual Report.
50% — Is Going to Wireless — 60 Billion Less.
U-Verse Is Copper to the Home.

When you add it up, not only did AT&T “miss-speak” about the $140 billion total — let’s call it a 15% FiberHype tax, (as the six years yielded only $121 billion in construction), but when we cut that in half, (as 50% has nothing to do with wiring the cities) — i.e., that’s $60 billion, (over six years)…

Pew Internet:
67% of Americans now have broadband at home, compared to 70% in 2013, and 13% connect via smartphone only vs 8% in 2013; smartphone penetration in US at 68% — Home Broadband 2015 — The share of Americans with broadband at home has plateaued, and more rely only on their smartphones for online access

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has asked Reliance Communications to stop the Free Basics service of Facebook, at least for some time. “We have asked them (Reliance Communications) to stop it and they have given us a compliance report that it has been stopped,” a senior government official told TOI.

Reliance Communications is Facebook’s sole telecom partner in India to offer a set of basic internet services free to its subscribers. The service is called Free Basics. Earlier known as Internet.org, Free Basics has been criticised by several experts as being against the spirit of net neutrality.

TRAI is yet to form a view whether Free Basics conforms to net neutrality. “The question has arisen whether a telecom operator should be allowed to have differential pricing for different kinds of content. Unless that question is answered, it will not be appropriate for us to continue to make that happen,” the source said, in reference to the Facebook-Reliance ‘Free Basics’ platform.

Net neutrality means Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favouring or blocking particular products or websites.

YouTube said T-Mobile US Inc. is interfering with its video traffic, raising a new issue as federal regulators examine the wireless carrier’s streaming-video strategy.

T-Mobile recently began offering a program that delivers video at lower quality in exchange for waiving related data fees. YouTube and its allies say T-Mobile also is lowering the quality of video that isn’t part of the program, including YouTube clips.

YouTube, which is owned by Alphabet Inc., said T-Mobile is effectively throttling, or degrading, its traffic. “Reducing data charges can be good for users, but it doesn’t justify throttling all video services, especially without explicit user consent,” a YouTube spokesman said.

The Federal Communications Commission’s net-neutrality rules, adopted in February, are designed to ensure that Internet providers don’t discriminate against traffic from particular sources, including throttling a class of applications.

Binge On, T-Mobile’s free streaming program, already has worried some consumer advocates, who warn the service could be the beginning of attempts to circumvent the net-neutrality rules.

Everyone’s favorite ISP Comcast says it has switched on its first live gigabit internet service without having to lay a single inch of new cable.

The lovable American giant has installed what it says is the world’s first DOCSIS 3.1 modem in a home in Philadelphia, offering download speeds of 1Gbps without having to install new cables or dig up the street. Just a new modem, and a firmware upgrade to the cable co’s equipment, is all that’s needed, we’re told

Comcast already offers gigabit broadband in some areas of the country, but this involves the tedious job of ripping up sidewalks and laying new cable – in other words, a lot of hassle that a DOCSIS 3.1 rollout will avoid.

It should, in theory, be quick and easy to get 1Gbps broadband to your home using DOCSIS 3.1, provided you already have a standard Comcast cable installation.

After carrying out some tests, Comcast said in March it would actually have the service ready in “early 2016.” That has now been set back to some moment before the end of 2016

The rollout schedule did appear to be rather, shall we say, courageous, especially since the other big player pushing DOCSIS 3.1 – Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) – said it was aiming at 2017 for the service.

The American broadband market is notoriously oligopolistic with the majority of citizens offered limited choice, especially at the high-speed end, complete with high monthly fees. The big telco companies frequently top the list of the most hated companies as voted by their own customers.

“The beauty of DOCSIS 3.1 is that it is backwards compatible, so no digging up streets or backyards.”

Today, workers began installing the first LinkNYC access points in New York. First announced in November 2014, the hubs are designed as an update to the standard phone booth, using upgraded infrastructure to provide gigabit Wi-Fi access points.

The full network will install more than 7,500 public hubs throughout the city, each replacing a pre-existing phone booth. Once completed, the hubs will also include USB device charging ports, touchscreen web browsing, and two 55-inch advertising displays. The city estimates that ads served by the new hubs will generate more than $500 million in revenue over the next 12 years.

Chris Welch / The Verge:
Verizon now covers up to $650 in early termination fees when switching mobile operators, joining other carriers in doing so — Verizon will give you up to $650 to switch from another carrier — Is the biggest US wireless carrier starting to feel some pressure from its rivals? Perhaps.

The 7RA-05U-0141-1 from LCR is a 5 slot, PICMG 3.0 Rev 2 chassis designed ATCA System for commercial, industrial, and prototype use. It has a physical dimension of 19” W x 15.25” D x 8.75” H which is made from Aluminum Frame. The enclosure can be mounted through a 19” rack mount or bench top.

5G cellular will spawn fresh design issues around its new air interface, massive antenna arrays and other new features, according to a panel that will address the topic at DesignCon in January.

5G systems will need to support faster switching times and lower latencies given they likely will be required to support:

Data services at 20 Gbits/second peak and 1 Gbit/s average
Latency as low as 1 millisecond
Reception while travelling at up to 500 km/hour
Frequencies between 6 and 100 GHz
Safety-critical applications such as self-driving cars

Work on 5G standards officially started this fall with initial proposals up for review in the spring, final specifications done in 2018 and services switching on as early as 2020.

Cell coverage can be fickle. You might get great reception at home but spotty coverage at work or at the gym even though other carriers work fine. And even if your carrier has your entire city pretty well covered, all bets are off when you travel. Sure you can roam on other networks, but your carrier will prioritize its own cell towers, even if there are better ones nearby. And those roaming fees can sure add up quick. It would be nice to be able to switch carriers on the fly, picking whichever one happens to have the best service in your exact location at any given time. Today that would mean carrying around multiple SIM cards, each with a different phone number. But in the near future, your phone may be able to switch between carriers without you having to swap out cards or phone numbers—even if you’re in the middle of a call.

Two year contracts are becoming a thing of the past

Today, Google is alone in offering its own cross-carrier wireless service, but it probably won’t be for long.

The magic behind Google-Fi is a new type of SIM card created by a German company called G&D, or Giesecke & Devrient. SIM (short for “subscriber identification module”) cards are essentially tiny computers that handle the complexities of authenticating your phone whenever you switch between different cell towers. Typically, these have been built to handle authentication on one and only one carrier’s towers, but G&D’s SIM cards allow Google to handle authentication across multiple carriers, including both GSM and CDMA networks. That enables Google’s phones to seek out which ever carrier happens to offer the best signal at any given moment.

This is a complicated process, and the kinks haven’t all been sorted out, which is probably why reviews of Project Fi have been so mixed. Plus, Project Fi is still only available to a small group of people. Google only has two networks on board

[Alexander Graf] gave an absolutely hilarious talk at 32C3 about the security flaws he found in cable modems from two large German ISPs. The vulnerability was very serious, resulting in remote root terminals on essentially any affected cable modem, and the causes were trivial: unencrypted passwords in files that are sent over

While [Alexander] was very careful to point out that he’d disclosed all of these vulnerabilities to the two German cable ISPs that were affected, he notably praised one of them for its speedy response in patching up the holes. As for the other? “They’d better hurry up.” He also mentions that, although he’s not sure, he suspects that similar vulnerabilities are present in other countries. Oh dear.

A very interesting point in the talk is the way that [Alexander] chose to go about informing the cable ISPs. Instead of going to them directly and potentially landing himself in jail, he instead went to the press, and let his contacts at the press talk to the ISPs. This both shielded him from the potential initial heat and puts a bit of additional pressure on the ISPs to fix the vulnerability — when the story hits the front page, they would really like to be ahead of the problem.

The KSZ8061MNx has a Media Independent Interface (MII) for direct connection to MII-compliant Ethernet MAC processors and switches, while the KSZ8061RNx features a Reduced Media Independent Interface (RMII) for direct connection to RMII-compliant Ethernet MAC processors and switches.

The KSZ8061 is available now for sampling at $1.16 each in lots of 10,000 units for the industrial grade. Volume production is expected 1Q 2016.

Brian Rohan / Associated Press:
Egypt shuts down Facebook’s Free Basics internet service on telco provider Etisalat, reasons unclear — Free Internet service for over 3 million Egyptians shut down — BEIRUT (AP) — Social media site Facebook says a program that had been giving free basic Internet services to over three million Egyptians has been shut down.